There’s a scene in “Top Five,” the new film written by, directed by and starring Chris Rock, in which the action on screen and the soundtrack are in perfect harmony, precisely because they’re at complete odds.

It involves Mr. Rock in flagrante with two women. Cedric the Entertainer, as a flamboyant fixer, shows up as well. What transpires is uproarious and moist, but what’s playing in the background is tender: Freddie Jackson’s “You Are My Lady.”

In the film, Mr. Rock plays Andre Allen, a stand-up comic turned film superstar who loathes the nature of his fame, based on goofy characters and catchphrases. He has a reality-TV-star fiancée, a fragile grip on his sobriety and — desperate to be taken seriously — a vanity project about a Haitian slave uprising that’s about to torpedo his career. Over the course of a day, he tells his story to a journalist (played by Rosario Dawson) and tries to unearth the spark that was there before celebrity became an albatross.

There are, of course, echoes of Mr. Rock’s own path through Hollywood, in which big-ticket studio movies that weren’t always received rapturously have given way to more modest-scale films, sometimes with Mr. Rock not playing the lead. “Top Five” is effectively an indie with a megastar in charge. After a strong reception at the Toronto Film Festival, Paramount paid $12.5 million for distribution rights, the festival’s biggest deal.

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Questlove, left, with Chris Rock, supervised the music for “Top Five,” which Mr. Rock wrote, directed and stars in.CreditDamon Winter/The New York Times

Mr. Rock invited his longtime friend Questlove — of the Roots, house band of “The Tonight Show” and longtime organic-minded hip-hop agitators — to serve as the film’s executive music producer. In a tiny room backstage at “Tonight” this month, on a day when Questlove had just raced through emergency rehearsal after the scheduled guest Bono injured himself in a bicycle accident in Central Park, the two men convened to talk about what they had in common, and what they learned from each other.

Like, for example, how to make a hilarious sex scene even funnier. Turns out it was Mr. Rock who chose the song. “Not knowing the value of comedy, I would have went with the most nastiest song ever, something like Jodeci’s ‘Freek’N You,’ ” Questlove said. “But he taught me the value of the irony, of the sweetness.”

These are excerpts from the conversation.

Q. I feel as if we’re not in an era of great soundtracks. With blaxploitation movies or the early hip-hop movies, there was a real symbiosis between music and film.

CHRIS ROCK I don’t get the sense that white executives worship black music the way they used to.

Is it that they don’t or they don’t feel they have to? Diversity changed as a concept, from “We’re going to fund a black show” to “We’re going to have a mainstream show that has a black character.”

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Chris Rock, left, and Questlove.CreditDamon Winter/The New York Times

ROCK You know what it is, too? Back then, white people didn’t assume they knew about anything black, so they would hire black people to make all these decisions. Now it’s like, “Who knows more about blackness than me?” [Laughter.] And you get what you get.

QUESTLOVE The thing that drew me to this project was actually knowing that that really doesn’t exist anymore. The last time I really got this feeling was when I saw “She’s Gotta Have It” at 15. I knew it was the dawning of something unseen: the black art-house film. It was a historical watershed moment. He hates when I put this pressure on him, but I saw the Allenesque overtones — “Annie Hall” — in this film. I’m not saying it’s an exact replica, but it’s on that path. I’ve been dying for just a black comedy, not even highbrow but just at a normal non-dumbed-down level that is clever and funny. This was the last train out the station that could possibly keep the genre alive.

And this is your first actual collaboration.

ROCK This is definitely the first. I talked to you about maybe doing a record, and you were like, “No, you have to work with Prince Paul.”

QUESTLOVE I missed out on those Grammys. But I enjoy speaking with [Rock] because he’s the only other black human being I know that is just a walking Smithsonian of information.

ROCK I would say we both have that need, and you’re one of the only black artists I can talk to about art and not get caught up in the paper chase of it all — you and Kanye. It’s just like, “O.K., let’s make something great.” I don’t meet a lot of brothers — or even white guys — that are on a quest for greatness. I think our bond, if I can say that ——

QUESTLOVE There’s a bond, Chris.

ROCK We both have very domineering fathers. That taught us more than anything the value of work.

QUESTLOVE Was he backstagey? Or Joe Jackson-y? I hate to make Joe Jackson an adjective.

ROCK He was Joe Jackson-y. Joe Jackson raised 10 kids in Gary, Ind., that from what I can tell don’t have a criminal record. Have you been to Gary, Ind.?

QUESTLOVE It’s horrible.

ROCK If I can defend Joe Jackson for one second: When you grow up in extreme poverty like that, sometimes you have to hit your kids. The consequences of them not listening to you are so much greater than the consequences to kids in a middle-class background. So something as little as: “Hey, don’t go to the corner. I don’t want you hanging out on the corner” — well if you’re in Alpine, N.J., and you end up hanging on the corner, it doesn’t mean anything. But if you’re a black boy on the wrong corner of Gary, Ind., or Chicago or Bed-Stuy, you can get shot. I’ve been thrown into police lineups just being on the corner.

ROCK I’ve been in police lineups three times in my life, just being in the wrong spot. White people must talk back to the police, but guess what, it’s not a life-or-death situation. But if a black kid talks back to the cops, that is life or death. A black boy is in danger. [In the wake of the Ferguson, Mo., verdict, several days after the interview, both men took to Twitter to express their frustration, with Questlove lamenting, “woke up black. woke up sad ... again."]

Was your father that tough on you?

ROCK My father was definitely Joe Jackson tough on me.

QUESTLOVE My dad didn’t play that.

What about your kids?

ROCK I always say, my kids are so rich, when they watch “Diff’rent Strokes,” they side with Mr. Drummond. “What’s wrong with those kids? Don’t they know a good deal when they see it?”

Are your kids listening to Hot 97?

ROCK They try to. They listen to Z100.

QUESTLOVE I’m seeing a pattern with millennial kids of black celebrities, how far removed they are from hip-hop.

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Questlove in Las Vegas in October.CreditEthan Miller/Getty Images

You’re talking about Jaden and Willow Smith?

QUESTLOVE Yeah, just any kids born into a seven-figure household after 1995. Well, Jaden and Willow are almost reinventing; they’re almost black emo. But it’s just crazy how I’m meeting kids who are now 14, 15, 16 and ——

They’re not into hip-hop?

ROCK It’s not central to who they are. I went to a block party in Bed-Stuy a couple years ago, I remember a bunch of black kids singing along to Miley Cyrus, “Party in the U.S.A.” In Bed-Stuy!

QUESTLOVE I got hired for my first bar mitzvah five weeks ago. I’m neurotic, so I did meticulous interviewing with all these Jewish kids here, all the interns. I came in prepared, and wouldn’t you know I got there and it was a black bar mitzvah? I had nothing but 5 Seconds of Summer and Taylor Swift, and I had to scrap everything and get clean Nicki, clean Wayne, clean Drake. He was like, “They didn’t tell you I was black?” [Laughter.]

Mr. Rock with crew members on the set of “Top Five."CreditAli Paige Goldstein/Paramount Pictures

That’s the 13-year-old turn-up.

ROCK “O.K., wait, I can’t have one of these? I’m having one of these. You call it whatever you want, but I’m having one of these.”

QUESTLOVE That’s the reason I got involved in this film. To me, the co-star of the film is the hip-hop midlife crisis. When Tracy [Morgan] says, “You don’t even have ‘The Symphony’ in your Top 5 posse cuts,” I was like, “Yo, this film is only talking to me right now!”

ROCK There’d have been a lot of fights. ‘Cause it’s really black but not necessarily about race. It’s hard to get white people to agree to do anything black that doesn’t have to do with race. That’s why white people don’t get R&B, ‘cause there’s no struggle in it. And the movie kind of operates on that level. In a normal movie, I go back to the projects and people hate me, ‘cause in every other black movie the richest person is the villain.

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Mario Batali, Jimmy Fallon and Questlove, who is musical director of “The Tonight Show,” during a cooking segment.CreditDouglas Gorenstein/NBC

QUESTLOVE I was wondering why you weren’t getting any hate [when his character returns to his old neighborhood]. Like, wow, you can just come back and ——

ROCK ‘Cause he’s there all the time! It’s no different than a doctor going back. You got aunts! You got cousins!

QUESTLOVE Do you literally go back?

ROCK Yeah. My father’s buried in the Evergreens Cemetery on Bushwick Avenue. So everybody knows they’re going to see me on Father’s Day. Everybody knows they’re going to see me around Christmas. You’re going to see me three, four times a year in Bed-Stuy.

QUESTLOVE And you have no qualms about it?

ROCK Oh there’s beef here and there. I’m not going to say it’s beef-less. But it ain’t like it would be on a TV show or a movie: “What you doing around here? You too good for us?” None of that.

QUESTLOVE My going back is more of a covert operation. I’ve got to plan. I usually drive to my neighborhood at 2 in the morning when everyone’s asleep.

ROCK You gotta break the ice. I broke the ice a while back.

QUESTLOVE It’s hard to break. Were you of your neighborhood when you were younger?

ROCK Yeah.

QUESTLOVE See, I was the black nerd. I was ridiculed.

ROCK You can do it, man! I’ll come with you. Play your block party, get it out of the way. Just do a D.J. set, buy some ice cream.

QUESTLOVE You came with Mister Softee?

ROCK 40 bucks of Mister Softee earns a tremendous amount of good will.

Is that related to the reason you chose to host the BET Awards this year?

QUESTLOVE He loves danger.

ROCK I do like danger. And it’s also an “allow me to reintroduce myself.” Like “Hey! I know you seen a lot of guys, but I can actually do this. I’m kind of nice at this.” You can’t take the black audience for granted. So I thought it was very important that I do that show. It was probably the highlight of my year.

More than this film?

ROCK Yeah, that too. But you know what’s crazy? There’s a lot of people with good movies. There’s only one guy hosting the BET Awards. [Laughter.] Bennett Miller didn’t host the BET Awards this year. Let me see [David] Fincher host the BET Awards. Watch what happens.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page AR1 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘O.K., Let’s Make Something Great’. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe